Lord Darling of Roulanish, Gordon Brown’s Chancellor through the financial crisis who led the Scots ‘No’ campaign – obituary

Darling attacked the Bank of England’s handling of the collapsed Bank of Credit & Commerce International, asking prophetically: “When is this going to happen again?” And when Barings was laid low by the rogue trader Nick Leeson, he commented: “If the Bank of England, an arm of the Government, is involved in trying to rescue a major bank, then we are entitled to expect the Chancellor to tell the House about it.” After the collapse of the Maxwell brothers’ trial, Darling called on ministers to review the work of the Serious Fraud Office. He pressed for an investigation into claims of insider dealing by Lord Archer in the shares of Anglia Television, of which Archer’s wife was a director, and after Asil Nadir fled the country while facing fraud charges, told the House: “We are entitled to know how Nadir got so many high-powered Tories to speak for him.” When Blair surged past Brown for the leadership following Smith’s sudden death, Darling stayed put, leading the charge when widespread pension mis-selling came to light. In 1996 Blair promoted him to Shadow Chief Secretary and Brown’s deputy, with the remit of keeping Labour’s spending promises to a minimum – a foretaste of Brown’s “Iron Chancellor” period. The consequences of devolution confronted him when Henry McLeish, Scotland’s Labour First Minister, moved to introduce free personal care for the elderly, with implications for the UK benefits system that Darling would not accept.